CASH ON DEMAND (1961)

Director: Quentin Lawrence

Writers: David T. Chantler, Lewis Griefer, adapted from Jacques Gillies’ teleplay The Gold Inside

Producers: Michael Carreras, Anthony Nelson-Keys

Cast: Peter Cushing, André Morell, Richard Vernon, Norman Bird, Kevin Stoney, Barry Lowe, Lois Daine, Edith Sharpe, Alan Haywood, (and uncredited cast members) Charles Morgan, Jimmy Cains, Vera Cook, Paddy Smith, Fred Stone, Gareth Tandy, Graham Tonbridge

Harry Fordyce (Peter Cushing) is the fastidious, unsentimental manager of the Haversham, England branch of the City & Colonial Bank. As the bank opens on December 23rd, Colonel Gore Hepburn (André Morell) arrives from the bank’s insurance company to inspect security. Once alone with Fordyce, Hepburn reveals that he is actually there to coerce Fordyce into helping him rob the bank or Hepburn’s accomplices will kill Fordyce’s wife and son.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

Cash on Demand is Hammer Films’ 1961 variant on Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol. It is rather fitting that the British studio that had just begun making a name for itself by revamping classic horror with their versions of Frankenstein and Dracula would dabble in an update on the classic Christmas comeuppance tale.

Cash on Demand is not a true modern remake of Dickens’ story, but it certainly shares the same sentiments while exchanging the supernatural for a criminal threat. Harry Fordyce is another office tyrant that receives his dose of holiday terror not from spectral visitations but from a cunning fiend that threatens everything he holds dear. Fordyce’s cold and efficient facade is cracked by the danger to his wife and child that forces him to assist Hepburn in the bank robbery.

The film opens with a leisurely series of panning shots throughout the empty interior of the bank just before it opens for the day’s business. This unusual and uneventful introduction manages to raise our anticipation. We are made to pay attention to the mundane setting that normally would just be a place where business is conducted attracting no interest at all. The uneasy music score that accompanies this while the credits are shown is far more effective than a rapid-fire series of quick cuts and CGI graphics meant to pass the time until the action begins, which is how so many films must present non-plot moments beginning a film these days. We are given time to get a feel for the environment where this entire story will occur.

There is nothing exotic to see in this bank branch setting. However, it’s reality and our intimacy with it is vital to increasing our sense of immediacy about the situation, the characters, and the stakes involved. One hardly expects anything other than the sedate business of a small town bank to occur here. That makes the contrast of the sudden introduction of the sinister all the more riveting. The fact that most of the film takes place in real time during the first hour that the bank opens for business further stresses the immediacy of everything that happens.

One could refer to all of the above business about this film’s stage setting as a less-is-more approach. That is certainly not the case when it comes to the performances of the two leads. Peter Cushing and André Morell are terrific. Cushing and Morell had starred opposite each other two years earlier as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, respectively, in Hammer Films’ The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959). The dynamic between these two actors is much different this time around.

Peter Cushing, of course, was a mainstay of Hammer’s many gothic horror films by this time. Here he is neither villain nor hero. As bank branch manager Harry Fordyce, he is the Ebenezer Scrooge stand-in that first earns our amused contempt and then becomes pathetic and sympathetic as the unwilling accomplice in a criminal’s cruel robbery plot.

André Morell is a sinister joy to watch as Colonel Gore Hepburn. He dispenses amiable charm and wit while reveling in the power he wields over the stuffy Fordyce. He takes sadistic satisfaction in making Fordyce squirm. Hepburn not only makes Fordyce aid him in the robbery of the bank Fordyce takes so much professional pride in, he also tweaks Fordyce’s coldness and lack of Christmas spirit. Hepburn is a fiend, yet he does have more social graces than his bullied victim.

Hammer Films' bread-and-butter was not only their gothic horror films, but also their adaptations of radio and television productions. A 1960 teleplay, The Gold Inside, was the basis for this film. That production also starred André Morell with Richard Vernon also in the role of the head bank clerk Pearson. The teleplay’s director Quentin Lawrence is carried over here, too. He had helmed another of my all-time favorite British thrillers that he also originated on television: the sci-fi horror flick The Trollenberg Terror (1958), re-titled The Crawling Eye in the US.

So, if you have enough neckties, socks, and ugly sweaters, ask for some Cash on Demand this Christmas. Just remember that this much suspense won’t fit in a money holder card. It will take at least four suitcases.

CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980), aka YOU BETTER WATCH OUT, TERROR IN TOYLAND

Director: Lewis Jackson

Writer: Lewis Jackson

Producers: Pete Kameron, Burt Kleiner

Cast: Brandon Maggart, Jeffrey DeMunn, Dianne Hull, Ellen McElduff, Brian Hartigan, Peter Neuman, Patricia Richardson, Ray Barry, Sam Grey, Robert Lesser, Andy Fenwick, Joe Jamrog, Wally Moran, Brian Neville, Gus Salud, Elizabeth Ridge, Scott McKay, Peter Friedman, Horace Bailey, Owen Hollander, John Brockman, Burt Kleiner, Shiela Anderson, William Robertson, Philip Casnoff, Michael Klinger, Mark Chamberlin, Mark Margolis, Jim Desmond, Jennifer Novteny, Stephen Mendillo, Ratanya Alda, Audrey Matson, Kerry Broderick 

Jolly Dream toy factory supervisor Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart) has been obsessed with Christmas his whole life. At a very young age, he had his sense of purity about his parents (Ellen McElduff, Brian Hartigan) and Santa Claus shattered one Christmas Eve. The frustrated, adult Harry sees the things he thinks are good and decent being thwarted by cynical modern-day society and the people he encounters in his daily life. Harry decides to become Santa Claus to reward the good and punish the bad. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

A lot of us can get really carried away with all of the preparations involved to celebrate Christmas. Worse than the decorating, shopping, and gift-wrapping is the housework. It’s one hell of an ordeal for this lazy bachelor to clean his up his dump before having any holiday guests drop in. Nobody likes dust in their eggnog.

Despite all of the effort involved, I think it’s worth it. If I ever start to question if all of this blood and sweat spent to commemorate the season is getting out of hand, I can take comfort in watching Christmas Evil. I have not quite taken my yuletide preparations to that fetishistic and dangerous extreme. 

Christmas Evil is the most offbeat and challenging movie about the yuletide season ever made. It is barely a horror film, wrapped in dark humor, bursting with seasonal traditions, loaded with Christmas cheer, yet confounded by society’s crassness. It does not neatly fit any genre film expectations, which is probably the reason it was not a commercial success. 

Only film fans of a morbid bent will probably appreciate Christmas Evil, yet many of them will be letdown if they come to this flick with expectations of a typical horror movie. This is not just a murderous wacko dressing up like the jolly old elf before beginning the body count. The film buff reveling in the confounding of expectations will derive the most joy from this production. The whole theme of the story is that a lot of things in life do not live up to expectations, especially the Christmas season. 

One can’t help but like this movie’s menace. Brandon Maggart’s performance captures the marginalized, lonely, and naïve character that has us rooting for him. His Harry Stadling is such a nice guy full of childlike idealism that he can’t be faulted for wishing that everyone had true Christmas spirit. However, like many idealists, Harry can’t accept that everything is not the way he wants and goes to a dangerous extreme to demonstrate his beliefs. 

We are introduced to the adult Harry in a manner that immediately establishes his Santa fixation. He sleeps wearing Santa pajamas and cap. His alarm clock is a musical Christmas knick-knack. He begins his day doing morning calisthenics to Christmas music cued up on his phonograph. His home is festooned with an assortment of vintage Santa memorabilia. Since his chalkboard countdown lists 55 days until Christmas, it is a safe bet that all of this stuff is not just set out for the yuletide season but are year-round fixtures in Harry’s quarters. It is certainly no accident that this Santa wannabe works in a toy factory.

A lot of time is spent showing how Harry tries to transform himself into Santa Claus and the preparation involved in fulfilling his Christmas duties. Harry takes a fetishistic satisfaction in the process. This is all done in secret and requires the same obsessive attention to detail and planning as any superhero or supervillain about to begin their clandestine career. 

Along the way we see Harry indulging in some of the Santa Claus activity that must be obsessive to an unhealthy degree if it will actually be carried out. He spies on the neighborhood children to write down in his Good Boys & Girls book and Bad Boys & Girls book what nice things and bad things they have done throughout the year. He has a shelf holding multiple years of these volumes. These notations will determine which children receive nice gifts or bad gifts. Not content working in a modern toy factory, Harry takes an old-world approach to handcrafting toys in his own home workshop.

Aside from some neighborhood children, Harry does not seem to relate very well to anyone. Harry’s younger brother Phil (Jeffrey DeMunn) is happily married, has two sons, and lives in the same house Harry and Phil were raised in. Phil’s wife Jackie (Dianne Hull) and his sons like Uncle Harry, but Phil has always resented his older brother’s instability. Phil’s happy and conventional family life seems to further isolate Harry. 

 

Everything builds up to the big night when Harry as Santa Claus makes his rounds. We swing back and forth between scenes that fill us with as much yuletide cheer as any traditional holiday classic and scenes where things get dangerous. This Santa’s idealism motivates him to make the season bright and to punish those that violate the Christmas spirit. Even the film’s happiest scene is undercut with a touch of unease when Harry’s Santa tells some kids at a Christmas party about the need for them to be good . . . or else. 

These changes in tone may distance some viewers. To the more perverse among us, that makes this film amusing and unpredictable. It all ends on a weird note of ambiguity that makes us wonder if it is supposed to be a happy ending. I suppose it all depends on just how much one empathizes with Harry and his ideals. 

Above all, Christmas Evil still stresses the importance of the kindness, generosity, and sincerity that should be most prevalent during the holiday season. Otherwise, old St. Nick might show up in a less than jolly mood.

DR. ORLOFF'S MONSTER (1964), aka THE SECRET OF DR. ORLOFF, THE MISTRESSES OF DR. JEKYLL

Director: Jesús Franco (as Jess Franck)

Writers: Jesús Franco (as David Kühne), Nicole Guettard (as David Coll), A. Norévo

Producer: Marius Lesoeur

Cast: Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui, Agnès Spaak, Hugo Blanco (as Hugh White), Luisa Sala, Pepe Rubio (as José Rubio), Perla Cristal, Magda Maldonado (as Magda MacDonald), Pastor Serrador, Manuel Guitián, Rafael Hernández, José Truchado, Marta Reves, Daniel Blumer, Javier de Rivera (as Javier Rivera), Juan Antonio Soler, Julio Infiesta, Julia Toboso, Maribel Hidalgo, Ramón Lillo, Mer Casas, Jesús Franco, (uncredited) Pedro Fenollar 

Over the Christmas holidays, young college student Melissa Fisherman (Agnès Spaak) visits her uncle, Dr. Conrad Fisherman (Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui), at his castle in Holfen, Austria. She finds the atmosphere there anything but welcoming. Her Uncle Conrad is distant and her Aunt Ingrid (Luisa Sala) has become a drunken recluse. Dr. Fisherman has been long embittered by the affair that his wife Ingrid had with his younger brother Andros (Hugo Blanco). Upon discovering the two lovers together, Dr. Fisherman murdered his brother. He then returned Andros to life in a catatonic state. Using ultrasonic techniques learned from the dying Dr. Orloff (Javier de Rivera), Dr. Fisherman can control Andros to make him follow his orders. Now Andros is sent out to stalk and kill various women Dr. Fisherman has given necklaces containing ultrasonic transmitters. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

When December rolls around, this flashback fanatic wallows in cinematic sentiments of the season. No, that does not mean I binge watch the Hallmark Channel 24/7. Between binges of rum-spiked eggnog and Christmas martinis (don’t forget the mini candy cane garnish), I indulge in filmic festivities of a more outré sort. Except for the aforementioned libations, nothing gets me more buzzed about the holidays than the merry mayhem to be found in such Christmas classics as Tales from the Crypt’s “…And All Through the House” segment (1972), Black Christmas (1974), and Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984).

However, being the eclectic Christmas film connoisseur that I am, I need a change of pace once in awhile. So I cast my gaze beyond the English-speaking world to ring in the holidays with the neck-wringing Dr. Orloff’s Monster.

This French-Spanish production by prolific Spanish filmmaker Jesús Franco was filmed in Madrid. However, as in Franco’s previous and unrelated horror film The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus (1962), this story takes place in the fictional Austrian town of Holfen. Prominently featured is the same imposing castle setting used in Franco’s France-located story The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962). 

Here we have a Dr. Fisherman as the mad scientist villain being referred to as Dr. Jekyll in certain dubs and alternate movie titles. This film has the second of Franco’s many Dr. Orloffs (previously spelled as “Orlof”) in a minor role. This mad doctor name-dropping of Jekyll and Orloff was apparently meant to appeal to a wider horror audience. 

The storyline itself seems rather slapdash. The plot is quite simple once we know of Dr. Conrad Fisherman’s infidelity grudge. The nature of the mad science used to create this film’s monster is barely touched upon. Fisherman seems unconcerned with his accomplishment of bringing a dead man back to life. That feat has actually already been accomplished before the film begins. Fisherman seems to only be interested in sending the zombie he has made of his murdered brother Andros out to murder a variety of sexy women. 

This guy really seems to have some misplaced priorities. Despite being stuck with an inebriated invalid wife that witnessed his act of murder, Dr. Fisherman can still sneak around to charm an assortment of babes. However, it seems his only purpose in doing so is to lavish upon them the gifts of his necklaces with ultrasonic transmitters to lure Andros in for the kill. This serial murder motivation is never explained. We do know that Dr. Fisherman obsesses about the infidelity that occurred many years earlier between his wife and brother. Somehow using the undead Andros to kill other women must vent some sort of animosity Fisherman has. Screw all of that play-God-and-make-scientific-history stuff. Fisherman makes a monster for the same reason any nine-year-old brat would: to kill. 

As in many Jesús Franco films, the nightclub scene figures into the plot. Jazz, drinks, and sexy female performers are fixtures in the weird world Franco’s stories explore. 

That Andros is one cool customer. I just wish I knew how a crusty-faced automaton keeps making the scene appearing in nightclub dressing rooms and killing the talent without even paying the cover charge. I could have saved a small fortune over the years. 

Again we have director Franco’s continued innovations of the erotic mingling with the horror. This was still pretty edgy stuff in the early ’60s. It is dealt with here in a pretty perfunctory manner; girls get naked and then get dead. This certainly suits the theme of obsessive misogyny that seems to motivate Dr. Conrad Fisherman. 

This is the third of director Franco’s quartet of ’60s black-and-white horror films. While I need to see many more films in his vast filmography, so far, these four early Franco films are my favorites. Dr. Orloff’s Monster is probably the least accomplished of them. While its plot is rendered in a very minimalist fashion, its continuity seems a bit jumbled, and it is a bit of a rehash of The Awful Dr.Orlof, the storyline is clear and the filming is executed with more discipline than many of Franco’s later works. 

As far as any yuletide traditions are concerned, this movie seems hell-bent on confounding them. The only gifts given are Dr. Fisherman’s deadly necklaces, barely any holiday decorations are displayed, no snow has fallen, the only happy carolers are a trio of hotel drunks, the meager attempt made at Christmas cheer in the Fisherman abode is angrily halted by the grouchy doctor, and the warmth of family is nowhere to be found. This film is about a Christmas where the few remaining members of the story’s family are all estranged from each other. The closest bond that any Fisherman family members share is between Melissa and Andros, the father she has never met until he has become an undead mute. 

Every once in a while, maybe we need a break from the holiday hustle and bustle with a Christmas movie that neither celebrates nor condemns the season. Dr. Orloff’s Monster is just indifferent to it.

CAT PEOPLE (1942)

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Writer: DeWitt Bodeen

Producer: Val Lewton

Cast: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt, (and uncredited cast members) Alan Napier, Elizabeth Russell, Alec Craig, Theresa Harris, John Piffle, Dot Farley, Steve Soldi

In New York City’s Central Park Zoo, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) meets lonely and beautiful Serbian immigrant Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon). They soon fall in love and get married. Unfortunately, Irena is afraid to consummate their marriage because she believes that she is descended from a Serbian race of satanic cat people. She fears that if she has her passions aroused she will transform into a huge cat and kill her lover.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

When RKO Radio Pictures wanted to pounce on the same audience that made Universal Pictures’ The Wolf Man (1941) a big hit, they figured that a picture with the title of Cat People would grab them. They dumped that derivative title into the lap of their fledgling producer Val Lewton to make a derivative B-film. However, Lewton was a literate and cultured man with no appreciation for the horror film standards set by Universal Pictures. Despite the exploitative title, Lewton set out to make a horror film with a sophisticated and innovative approach.

Val Lewton made me appreciate that a film producer could be much more than just the guy watching the schedule and the budget on a film while kicking the director in the ass. Lewton’s taste and creativity shaped his productions as much as his writers and directors. He contributed story ideas and rewrote scripts.

Above all, Lewton decreed that his horror films would involve the audience by being ambiguous. There was often a decision to be made by the characters and the audience about what the menace was and who or what was to blame. The scares came from within the viewers prompted by the tease of shadows and sounds that could suggest almost anything. Suggestion forced the viewers to pay attention and use their imaginations that involved them more deeply than most other films.

In Cat People Lewton uses a very low-key approach in a slow burn story of marital dysfunction. We are left to figure out if that dysfunction is due to a psychological or supernatural cause. There is no outright villain provided.

As Irena Dubrovna, Simone Simon is quite adorable. She is immediately likable and always sympathetic. Even once we are aware that she may become a menace, we still feel for her. She has been emotionally and psychologically injured through no fault of her own.

Because Simon’s character is so charming, it would be easy to resent Kent Smith’s Oliver Reed. Some people may find him a bit dense as the lucky bum that hooks up with a sweet lady like Irena and can’t deal with her superstitions. That is really not a fair criticism. The horror film audience is primed to accept the possibility of a supernatural menace in a story. Were such a complication to be fixated on by someone in our own relationships, we would want to dismiss that as a fantasy or delusion to reestablish a sense of stability in our lives. Let’s cut Oliver Reed some slack. He does manage to remain chaste in his marriage waiting for his wife Irena to overcome her sexual dread.

However, Oliver does manage to eventually piss us off when he has the thoughtless lapse of letting his gorgeous co-worker Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) in on his marital problems. Despite the fact that she is also in love with Oliver (like I said, he’s a lucky bum), she is such a good sport that she recommends a psychiatrist to help Irena. As Alice says, she’s “the new kind of other woman.” It is a true credit to Randolph’s performance that we still like her Alice character as much as Irena.

A real highlight is the enigmatic cameo by Elizabeth Russell. She seems positively mystical as she disturbs Irena during a brief encounter in a restaurant. As with so many incidents in this film, we can’t put our finger on anything that is truly an indication of danger or evil in this moment, but as horror film patrons we are just as sensitive as Irena to the potential for the sinister.

The one character that seems a bit shifty is the psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway). With his upper crust manner and English accent, he seems a bit removed from the other characters and perhaps a bit too smug. He also lets his libido cross the line in his doctor-patient relationship.

Good performances by the aforementioned actors make the slow build up to the scenes of threat really work. Once we are bonded with these characters and their lives, the scary set pieces succeed because we feel that there is something to lose rather than just a morbid spectacle to witness. The technique used to present the scares relies on suggestion and the unease about a menace that can’t be fully comprehended.

The higher-ups at RKO insisted on a few shots in some scenes to make the menace a bit less ambiguous. There is still plenty left to the imagination and we are teased throughout the first half of the picture wondering just what sort of threat we are dealing with. In some later Lewton flicks, the menace could be soft-pedaled to the point of frustration. I think Cat People has just the right menacing mix of the suggested, the suspected, and the certain. Our perceptions are a bit vague as they are for the film characters, but we are given just enough information to arrive at our own conclusions.

It must be noted that one of Val Lewton’s innovations was introduced in Cat People. It has been dubbed “the bus.” This jump scare technique is usually done with much less finesse these days as the false scares that must punctuate most youth-centric fright flicks between the kills.

Cat People was the first of Val Lewton’s nine RKO horror films of the ’40s that have become classics of the genre. It set out to be a classy counterpoint to the prevailing MO in horror films typified by Universal Pictures. The management of RKO was not happy with Cat People until the cash from the box office started piling up. After a couple of big-budget RKO flops by Orson Welles, Cat People’s huge success on its small investment saved the studio. With its intimacy and sympathetic characters presented in a reserved and moody manner, Cat People demonstrated that there was more than one way for the horror film to skin a cat.

IT! (1967)

Director: Herbert J. Leder

Writer: Herbert J. Leder

Producer: Herbert J. Leder

Cast: Roddy McDowall, Paul Maxwell, Jill Haworth, Alan Sellers, Noel Trevarthen, Aubrey Richards, Oliver Johnston, Ernest Clark, Richard Goolden, Dorothy Frere, Ian McCulloch, Tom Chatto, Steve Kirby, Frank Sieman, Russell Napier, Brian Haines, John Baker, Mark Burns, Raymond Adamson, Lindsay Campbell 

Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall), the assistant curator of a London art museum, discovers that the latest piece to be put on display is the legendary Golem of Prague. This Hebrew statue can be brought to life and serve the will of its master. The frustrated and unstable Pimm is infatuated with the possibilities of the power he can wield controlling the indestructible Golem (Alan Sellers). 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

It may surprise my readers to know that this classy and cultured character doesn’t frequent museums very often. Is that due to this retro reprobate’s arrested development and intellectual laziness? Of course not! I avoid public collections of historic and cultural interest due to a finely developed sense of self-preservation. My lifelong study of cinematic artifacts has discovered that museums are very dangerous places. Hang around a museum too long and you run the risk of becoming a wax-covered display, getting strangled by mummies, or being disemboweled by demonic beings. The best you can hope for is that the gorgeous museum patron you obsess about will drive you nuts.

There is no clearer example of the warning about the danger zones that museums pose to the public than It! The joint in this flick makes headlines with the fatalities suffered by its staff and contractors at an alarming rate. Morbid bastards that the public are, it turns out to be good for business. Morbid bastard that I am, It! keeps me returning for more viewings, as well.

The novelty of this movie’s menace is that there had not been much done before with the Golem legend. Since there had been only a handful of Golem films made over thirty years earlier and one Czechoslovakian film in 1951, this monster seemed like a pretty fresh gimmick. Although this is not a Hammer Films production, this British film seems to be following Hammer’s lead by doing a contemporary take on an old movie monster. In fact, Carlo Martelli’s music score here is actually using similar themes he used a few years earlier in Hammer’s The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964). 

The title menace itself is a monster lacking in any character aside from an unwillingness to stay idle. The Golem is little more than a weapon used by our villain. As portrayed by Roddy McDowall, Arthur Pimm is the one that brings the Golem to life, and Roddy McDowall’s performance is the force that animates this entire film. 

If ever a movie was carried by its star, It! is certainly held up by Roddy McDowall as nutjob protagonist Arthur Pimm. While his Golem can tear down Hammersmith Bridge, such power pales alongside McDowall’s performance singlehandedly lifting this wild and unwieldy story. He is funny, crazy, and sympathetic. We know he is wrong, yet as the main character he keeps our interest wanting to see just how long he can get away with his crimes that were already underway before he animated his stone henchman. 

As if to atone for being one of the biggest knobs I have ever seen in a horror film back in 1958’s How to Make a Monster, Paul Maxwell is the hero in It! As Jim Perkins, the visiting American representative of the New York Museum, Maxwell gives a nice performance that plays well off of McDowall’s. Perkins’ manner borders on smug, but his easy confidence contrasts nicely with Pimm’s instability. Of course, the fact that he scores instantly with Ellen Grove (Jill Haworth), Pimm’s object of unrequited lust, makes us empathize even more with the mad curator. 

Speaking of madness, there is another obvious horror film influence lumped into this narrative. Fans of Psycho (1960) can’t miss it and I rather like it. Derivative though it may be, it pumps up the ghastly content in the thin story and demonstrates how flawed our protagonist Arthur Pimm is. The whole point of the movie is that when power falls into the wrong hands, as it does with Arthur Pimm, that power will be misused. 

I appreciate a simple story well told, and It! is a fun bit of horror hokum. The only lapse for me is that, although the Golem is indestructible, it is awfully slow. Even if the military can’t destroy it, they could certainly outmaneuver it to raid Pimm’s hideout late in the film and waste the mad curator. Of course, that would still leave the Golem at large, and destroying it seems to be the military’s main objective. There may have been some concern about the safety of Ellen as Pimm’s hostage, but eventually the army decides to hell with that and goes for the nuclear option. This provides another heroic opportunity for Paul Maxwell to make me forget what an absolute jerk he was in How to Make a Monster. 

The thing I have always found to be most unsettling about the film is the warning that is engraved on the Golem. In attempting to understand the Golem and how to control it, Pimm takes a rubbing of the engraved characters to an old scholar (Richard Goolden) for translation. It is such a bleak prophecy that it is as nihilistic as anything appearing in any horror film at the time when things seemed to be taking a much darker turn in the genre.